Final Report Summary - FALSEPOVERTY (False Poverty: The Cultural, Political and Historical Implications of Literary Accounts of 'Social Passing')
The first year of the FALSEPOVERTY project proceeded mainly according to the work plan in the proposal. Stage One (months 1 to 4.5) saw the identification and collection of primary sources describing incognito social investigation in Britain, and Stage Two saw the same work being carried out for secondary sources. Alongside printed sources, various archive material was also consulted: David Railton’s letters in the Imperial War Museum and Celia Fremlin’s work for Mass-Observation held in the M-O Archive at the University of Sussex. Family members of both Railton and Fremlin were also contacted for further information. Work on F.G. Wallace-Goodbody involved consultation of the Royal Literary Fund archive in the British Library, French local papers in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, as well as on-site research to identify the unnamed workhouse that he visited, which was identified as that belonging to the parish of St George’s Hanover Square on Mount Street, Mayfair. This identification was aided by correspondence with Anna Edwards, Assistant Archivist at the Jesuit Archives (British Province) and Lis Hasted, Administrator, The Grosvenor Chapel. However, whereas the work plan dedicated Stage 7 (months 19 to 21) to the collection of primary and secondary sources relating to non-British sources, it was found that this fitted more easily into the work carried out in Stages One and Two, as to have remained faithful to the work plan would have meant leaving certain lines of enquiry only partially investigated; this was also partly due to the discovery of the relative paucity of secondary material, which left time for anticipated collection of foreign-language sources. It was equally found that Stages Three and Four – first analysis of texts and collection of historical data – could not be so easily separated, as problems in analysis could only be solved through historical investigation, and in practice the two stages were combined. The time thereby gained has meant that drafting of work towards the book that should be the project’s main outcome has already begun ahead of schedule, and stood at the end of the first year at approximately twenty-three thousand words.
The first outcome of the analysis, the foundation upon which further work was to be built, was the individuation of five types of incognito social exploration. The first is that exemplified by James Greenwood, the figure whose social exploration led to the publication of the work that may be considered the true onlie begetter of the genre of incognito social investigation. This is that strand that takes most narrowly ‘the poor’ as its object of study, meaning thereby the destitute, the outcast, the homeless; the incognito social investigators in this tradition are those who feign homelessness. The second is a movement that on one hand had roots stretching far further back than the 1860s, but that nonetheless became a form of incognito social investigation over the years following as it was leavened by the social interests of the Greenwood tradition. This, broadly speaking, is an interest in the life of Gypsies (the exonym ‘Gypsies’ is used to mark the fact that many of the social investigators in question were interested in a romantic construction of the ‘Gypsy’ rather than real Romanis) and a sharing thereof. The third type looks at relative poverty rather than absolute, as it is that carried out by those who take on badly-paid work in order to report on it. Of vital importance here is the fact that this is far and away the most common form of incognito social investigation carried out by women. The fourth is a rather nebulous type that shades into both Type 1 and Type 2, as well as having much to do with travel literature. This is the exploration of poverty through walking, for pedestrianism and poverty are linked in a number of heterogeneous texts, and the term ‘tramping’ is suitably bivalent. The final type is that of those incognito social explorers who settled in the areas they explored, and the central part of whose accounts is that settling. These five types should not be thought of as mutually exclusive.
The year also saw the presentation of two conference papers on issues relating to incognito social investigation in fiction: as the texts examined were fiction, they were outwith the main scope of this project; the issues involved, however, were interesting enough to warrant exploration, and their relevance to the wider questions thrown up by the project is clear. The first was ‘“Many Acquaintances, and Those in the Most Different Classes of Society”: Sherlock Holmes as Social Explorer’, delivered at the ‘Sherlock Holmes: Past and Present’ conference held under the auspices of the Institute of English Studies at Senate House in June 2013 (a revised version has been accepted for publication in the volume of selected papers from the conference); the second, ‘Questions of Class and Genre in the Albert Campion Novels: Margery Allingham’s “Grand Programme”’, was delivered at the ‘“We Speak a Different Tongue”: Maverick Voices and Modernity, 1890–1939’ conference held at St John’s College, Durham, in July 2013 (a revised version has been requested as part of a proposal for a book on alternatives to Modernism being considered by Pickering and Chatto). A chapter for a forthcoming Italian book on Dickens to be published by Bononia University Press was also written. This, entitled, ‘Three Types of Poverty in The Pickwick Papers: Towards a Classification of Representations of Poverty in Dickens’, drew greatly upon the research and concepts elaborated thitherto during this project.
In the second year, the project mostly continued according to the work plan in the proposal, with the following two important differences: as discussed in the mid-term report, Stage Seven had been carried out early, and the time freed up by this was dedicated to further research and analysis; archival research on primary sources held in the United States that had only been discovered at a later date was carried out throughout the project’s second year, and these sources’ late discovery obviously meant that Stage One/Two research was still being carried out throughout this period. An example of how such discoveries could change the project timetable may be seen in the fact that, at the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference, attended two weeks before the project’s end, the researcher learnt of unpublished matter relating to discussion of James Greenwood’s ‘A Night in a Workhouse’, research and analysis of which he had ‘finished’ during Stage Three, that implied re-analysis of the text and reconsideration of his conclusions.
The following archival research was carried out: November 2013, the Harry A. Franck papers at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor); July 2014, the Stephen Graham papers at Florida State University (Tallahassee); August 2014, the Francis Hindes Groome papers at the Boston Athenæum (Boston). Research in the last of these collections led to the discovery of texts that, according to Professor Yaron Matras of the University of Manchester, may be the latest known examples of Inflected Romani as written by a community speaker; if so, this would be an extremely important discovery (although one related only tangentially to the project), and work continues on analysing the texts and looking at the possibility of publishing them. Furthermore, research in the London Metropolitan Archives led to the discovery of the records of George Orwell’s 1931 conviction for drunkenness. This, the first documentary evidence for any of Orwell’s incognito social investigation, represents a major discovery for Orwell studies. It will be published with analysis in the December 2014 number of Notes and Queries, and possible media interest is foreseen. The researcher was invited to talk on the discovery at the June 2014 George Orwell Now! symposium, and has also been invited to talk at the 2015 AGM of the Orwell Society.
The researcher also gave three conference papers: “I Can’t Think How You Can Live in Such a Horrid Place!”: The Coast as Privileged Site of Social Investigation in the Early Twentieth Century’ (Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, March 2014, Oxford); ‘“Homelessness” and Incognito Social Investigation: Explorations of When “Homeless” Was Not Metonymic with ‘Poor’ (HOME|less Interdisciplinary Conference, University of Kent, June 2014); ‘The Greenwoodian Incognito Social Investigation Text, 1866-1933: Down and Out in Paris and London and the Death of a Genre’ (Crossing the Space Between, 1914-1945 [16th annual conference of the multidisciplinary society The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945], Institute of English Studies, London, July 2014). Besides the lecture given to the George Orwell Now! symposium (‘Edward Burton, Fish Porter, Drunk and Incapable: New Evidence on Orwell’s “Honesty” from the Records of his 1931 Conviction’), the researcher was also invited to give a paper in the UCL English Department seminar series on his research (‘“To learn by actual experience”: James Greenwood and the Incognito Social Investigation Tradition’, October 2013). Two conferences were also attended without papers being given: the annual Literary London conference (London, July 2014) and the annual Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference (Wilmington, September 2014).
The scientist-in-charge was presented with a draft of the book (approximately 100,000 words) resulting from the project at the end of Stage Eight (as well as with all other deliverables per the project proposal). However, the sheer volume of material found and analysed has meant that the draft is complete with regards to Types 1 and 4 as discussed in the mid-term report, as well as for nineteenth-century examples of Type 3. Twentieth-century Type 3 examples and Type 5 have been analysed, but still need to be put into a proper draft form. After discussion with the scientist-in-charge, it was decided that Type 2 incognito social investigation (that dealing with Gypsies) would not be included: the amount of material involved is too great to reduce to part of this project, and a future research project on this is being planned.
The researcher has made it known at various conferences that he is at work on a monograph, and this has generated a lively interest. It is hoped that the existence of a work writing the history of these texts and analysing them will provide historical information that can be used comparatively by policymakers so that their rhetoric surrounding ‘the poor’ becomes more nuanced and self-aware.
The first outcome of the analysis, the foundation upon which further work was to be built, was the individuation of five types of incognito social exploration. The first is that exemplified by James Greenwood, the figure whose social exploration led to the publication of the work that may be considered the true onlie begetter of the genre of incognito social investigation. This is that strand that takes most narrowly ‘the poor’ as its object of study, meaning thereby the destitute, the outcast, the homeless; the incognito social investigators in this tradition are those who feign homelessness. The second is a movement that on one hand had roots stretching far further back than the 1860s, but that nonetheless became a form of incognito social investigation over the years following as it was leavened by the social interests of the Greenwood tradition. This, broadly speaking, is an interest in the life of Gypsies (the exonym ‘Gypsies’ is used to mark the fact that many of the social investigators in question were interested in a romantic construction of the ‘Gypsy’ rather than real Romanis) and a sharing thereof. The third type looks at relative poverty rather than absolute, as it is that carried out by those who take on badly-paid work in order to report on it. Of vital importance here is the fact that this is far and away the most common form of incognito social investigation carried out by women. The fourth is a rather nebulous type that shades into both Type 1 and Type 2, as well as having much to do with travel literature. This is the exploration of poverty through walking, for pedestrianism and poverty are linked in a number of heterogeneous texts, and the term ‘tramping’ is suitably bivalent. The final type is that of those incognito social explorers who settled in the areas they explored, and the central part of whose accounts is that settling. These five types should not be thought of as mutually exclusive.
The year also saw the presentation of two conference papers on issues relating to incognito social investigation in fiction: as the texts examined were fiction, they were outwith the main scope of this project; the issues involved, however, were interesting enough to warrant exploration, and their relevance to the wider questions thrown up by the project is clear. The first was ‘“Many Acquaintances, and Those in the Most Different Classes of Society”: Sherlock Holmes as Social Explorer’, delivered at the ‘Sherlock Holmes: Past and Present’ conference held under the auspices of the Institute of English Studies at Senate House in June 2013 (a revised version has been accepted for publication in the volume of selected papers from the conference); the second, ‘Questions of Class and Genre in the Albert Campion Novels: Margery Allingham’s “Grand Programme”’, was delivered at the ‘“We Speak a Different Tongue”: Maverick Voices and Modernity, 1890–1939’ conference held at St John’s College, Durham, in July 2013 (a revised version has been requested as part of a proposal for a book on alternatives to Modernism being considered by Pickering and Chatto). A chapter for a forthcoming Italian book on Dickens to be published by Bononia University Press was also written. This, entitled, ‘Three Types of Poverty in The Pickwick Papers: Towards a Classification of Representations of Poverty in Dickens’, drew greatly upon the research and concepts elaborated thitherto during this project.
In the second year, the project mostly continued according to the work plan in the proposal, with the following two important differences: as discussed in the mid-term report, Stage Seven had been carried out early, and the time freed up by this was dedicated to further research and analysis; archival research on primary sources held in the United States that had only been discovered at a later date was carried out throughout the project’s second year, and these sources’ late discovery obviously meant that Stage One/Two research was still being carried out throughout this period. An example of how such discoveries could change the project timetable may be seen in the fact that, at the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference, attended two weeks before the project’s end, the researcher learnt of unpublished matter relating to discussion of James Greenwood’s ‘A Night in a Workhouse’, research and analysis of which he had ‘finished’ during Stage Three, that implied re-analysis of the text and reconsideration of his conclusions.
The following archival research was carried out: November 2013, the Harry A. Franck papers at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor); July 2014, the Stephen Graham papers at Florida State University (Tallahassee); August 2014, the Francis Hindes Groome papers at the Boston Athenæum (Boston). Research in the last of these collections led to the discovery of texts that, according to Professor Yaron Matras of the University of Manchester, may be the latest known examples of Inflected Romani as written by a community speaker; if so, this would be an extremely important discovery (although one related only tangentially to the project), and work continues on analysing the texts and looking at the possibility of publishing them. Furthermore, research in the London Metropolitan Archives led to the discovery of the records of George Orwell’s 1931 conviction for drunkenness. This, the first documentary evidence for any of Orwell’s incognito social investigation, represents a major discovery for Orwell studies. It will be published with analysis in the December 2014 number of Notes and Queries, and possible media interest is foreseen. The researcher was invited to talk on the discovery at the June 2014 George Orwell Now! symposium, and has also been invited to talk at the 2015 AGM of the Orwell Society.
The researcher also gave three conference papers: “I Can’t Think How You Can Live in Such a Horrid Place!”: The Coast as Privileged Site of Social Investigation in the Early Twentieth Century’ (Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, March 2014, Oxford); ‘“Homelessness” and Incognito Social Investigation: Explorations of When “Homeless” Was Not Metonymic with ‘Poor’ (HOME|less Interdisciplinary Conference, University of Kent, June 2014); ‘The Greenwoodian Incognito Social Investigation Text, 1866-1933: Down and Out in Paris and London and the Death of a Genre’ (Crossing the Space Between, 1914-1945 [16th annual conference of the multidisciplinary society The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945], Institute of English Studies, London, July 2014). Besides the lecture given to the George Orwell Now! symposium (‘Edward Burton, Fish Porter, Drunk and Incapable: New Evidence on Orwell’s “Honesty” from the Records of his 1931 Conviction’), the researcher was also invited to give a paper in the UCL English Department seminar series on his research (‘“To learn by actual experience”: James Greenwood and the Incognito Social Investigation Tradition’, October 2013). Two conferences were also attended without papers being given: the annual Literary London conference (London, July 2014) and the annual Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference (Wilmington, September 2014).
The scientist-in-charge was presented with a draft of the book (approximately 100,000 words) resulting from the project at the end of Stage Eight (as well as with all other deliverables per the project proposal). However, the sheer volume of material found and analysed has meant that the draft is complete with regards to Types 1 and 4 as discussed in the mid-term report, as well as for nineteenth-century examples of Type 3. Twentieth-century Type 3 examples and Type 5 have been analysed, but still need to be put into a proper draft form. After discussion with the scientist-in-charge, it was decided that Type 2 incognito social investigation (that dealing with Gypsies) would not be included: the amount of material involved is too great to reduce to part of this project, and a future research project on this is being planned.
The researcher has made it known at various conferences that he is at work on a monograph, and this has generated a lively interest. It is hoped that the existence of a work writing the history of these texts and analysing them will provide historical information that can be used comparatively by policymakers so that their rhetoric surrounding ‘the poor’ becomes more nuanced and self-aware.